The present invention relates to a toner cartridge adapted to fit within a toner cartridge-receiving cavity of a printer.
Laser printers use a coherent beam of light, hence the term “laser printer,” to expose discrete portions of an image transfer drum thus attracting the printing toner. Toner is a mixture of pigment (most commonly black) and plastic particles. The toner becomes electro-statically attracted to exposed portions of the photoconductive transfer drum.
The photoconductive drum rotates opposite the developer roller, the developer roller being in fluid contact with the toner. The toner is transferred to paper, or other medium, as it passes over the rotating image transfer drum. Subsequently, the paper is heated so that the plastic is melted thereby permanently affixing the ink to the paper.
Most printer manufacturers design their printers to accept toner cartridges manufactured by it and to reject the toner cartridges manufactured by others. More particularly, to increase sales of their own toner cartridges, printer manufacturers have added electronic identification features to the printers and to the toner cartridges that do not enhance the functional performance of the printer in any way but which serve to prevent use of a competitor's toner cartridge in the printer. Printer manufacturers also prefer to sell new toner cartridges to replace empty toner cartridges. Therefore, they do not support the re-cycling industry.
Regional lockout is the programming practice, code, chip, or physical barrier used to prevent the playing of media designed for a device from the country where it is marketed on the version of the same device marketed in another country. It is a form of vendor lock-in control. Regional lockout usually uses manufacturer-specific hardware that is instructed to operate only with consumables designated for a particular region, and that region is then encoded onto the consumable.
Manufacturers utilize regional lockout to segment the world into different regions, and then only sell a particular region's model (and, of course, region-encoded media) in that area. As a result, makers and distributors of electronic devices are able to gouge consumers by charging more in some regions than they do in others. Consumers are harmed because an inexpensive device made in one region cannot, in theory, be used in a more expensive market.
Thus there is a need for a universal printer chip that enables a single toner cartridge to be used with printers made by differing manufacturers, with differing printer's models made by a common manufacturer. There is also a need to extend the universality of the chip to allow the manufacture of a single cartridge that can be used in multiple geographic regions. In addition to new cartridges, such a universal printer chip could be used in conjunction with spent cartridges that are re-filled with toner when empty by the re-cycling industry.